This new Hubble image shows NGC 1566, a beautiful galaxy located approximately 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish). NGC 1566 is an intermediate spiral galaxy, meaning that while it does not have a well defined bar-shaped region of stars at its centre — like barred spirals — it is not quite an unbarred spiral either (heic9902o). The small but extremely bright nucleus of NGC 1566 is clearly visible in this image, a telltale sign of its membership of the Seyfert class of galaxies. The centres of such galaxies are very active and luminous, emitting strong bursts of radiation and potentially harbouring supermassive black holes that are many millions of times the mass of the Sun. NGC 1566 is not just any Seyfert galaxy; it is the second brightest Seyfert galaxy known. It is also the brightest and most dominant member of the Dorado Group, a loose concentration of galaxies that together comprise one of the richest galaxy groups of the southern hemisphere. This image highlights the beauty and awe-inspiring nature of this unique galaxy group, with NGC 1566 glittering and glowing, its bright nucleus framed by swirling and symmetrical lavender arms. This image was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. A version of the image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by Flickr user Det58.

We describe how a simple class of out of equilibrium mass distributions evolve under their self-gravity to produce a quasi-planar spiral structure surrounding a virialized core, qualitatively resembling a spiral galaxy. The spiral structure is transient, but can survive tens of dynamical times, and further reproduces qualitatively noted features of spiral galaxies as the predominance of trailing two-armed spirals and large pitch angles. The mechanism leads generically to a characteristic transition from predominantly rotational motion, in a region outside the core, to radial ballistic motion in the outermost parts. Such radial motions are excluded in our Galaxy up to 15 kpc, but could be detected at larger scales in the future by GAIA. We explore the apparent motions seen by external observers of the velocity distributions of our toy galaxies, and find that it is difficult to distinguish them from those of a rotating disc with sub-dominant radial motions at levels typically inferred from observations. These simple models illustrate the possibility that the observed apparent motions of spiral galaxies might be explained by non-trivial non-stationary mass and velocity distributions without invoking a dark matter halo or modification of Newtonian gravity. In this scenario the observed phenomenological relation between the centripetal and gravitational acceleration of the visible baryonic mass could have a simple explanation.

We describe how a simple class of out of equilibrium, rotating and asymmetrical mass distributions evolve under their self-gravity to produce a quasi-planar spiral structure surrounding a virialized core, qualitatively resembling a spiral galaxy. The spiral structure is transient, but can survive tens of dynamical times, and further reproduces qualitatively noted features of spiral galaxies as the predominance of trailing two-armed spirals and large pitch angles. As our models are highly idealized, a detailed comparison with observations is not appropriate, but generic features of the velocity distributions can be identified to be potential observational signatures of such a mechanism. Indeed, the mechanism leads generically to a characteristic transition from predominantly rotational motion, in a region outside the core, to radial ballistic motion in the outermost parts. Such radial motions are excluded in our Galaxy up to 15 kpc, but could be detected at larger scales in the future by GAIA. We explore the apparent motions seen by external observers of the velocity distributions of our toy galaxies, and find that it is difficult to distinguish them from those of a rotating disc with sub-dominant radial motions at levels typically inferred from observations. These simple models illustrate the possibility that the observed apparent motions of spiral galaxies might be explained by non-trivial non-stationary mass and velocity distributions without invoking a dark matter halo or modification of Newtonian gravity. In this scenario the observed phenomenological relation between the centripetal and gravitational acceleration of the visible baryonic mass could have a simple explanation.

Comments:

14 pages, 9 figures, The Astrophysical Journal in press. Two movies of the simulation is available at this link: this http URL

Simulations of purely self-gravitating N-body systems are often used in
astrophysics and cosmology to study the collisionless limit of such systems.
Their results for macroscopic quantities should then converge well for
sufficiently large N. Using a study of the evolution from a simple space of
spherical initial conditions – including a region characterised by so-called
“radial orbit instability” – we illustrate that the values of N at which such
convergence is obtained can vary enormously. In the family of initial
conditions we study, good convergence can be obtained up to a few dynamical
times with N $ \sim 10^3$ – just large enough to suppress two body relaxation –
for certain initial conditions, while in other cases such convergence is not
attained at this time even in our largest simulations with N $\sim 10^5$. The
qualitative difference is due to the stability properties of fluctuations
introduced by the N-body discretisation, of which the initial amplitude depends
on N. We discuss briefly why the crucial role which such fluctuations can
potentially play in the evolution of the N-body system could, in particular,
constitute a serious problem in cosmological simulations of dark matter.

It was a long time that I wanted to fix the webpages about my research activity. Now I have done a first rough step in the organization of them… more is to come. This is the main one while the sub-pages are the following:

We study the collapse of an isolated, initially cold, irregular (but almost spherical) and (slightly) inhomogeneous cloud of self-gravitating particles. The cloud is driven towards a virialized quasi-equilibrium state by a fast relaxation mechanism, occurring in a typical time τc, whose signature is a large change in the particle energy distribution. Post-collapse particles are divided into two main species: bound and free, the latter being ejected from the system. Because of the initial system’s anisotropy, the time varying gravitational field breaks spherical symmetry so that the ejected mass can carry away angular momentum and the bound system can gain a non-zero angular momentum. In addition, while strongly bound particles form a compact core, weakly bound ones may form, in a time scale of the order of τc, several satellite sub-structures. These satellites have a finite lifetime that can be longer than τc and generally form a flattened distribution. Their origin and their abundance are related to the amplitude and nature of initial density fluctuations and to the initial cloud deviations from spherical symmetry, which are both amplified during the collapse phase. Satellites show a time dependent virial ratio that can be different from the equilibrium value b≈−1: although they are bound to the main virialized object, they are not necessarily virially relaxed.

Isolated, initially cold and spherically symmetric self-gravitating systems may give rise to a virial equilibrium state which is far from spherically symmetric, and typically triaxial, and with no-zero angular momentum. We discuss the main features of the dynamical mechanism that gives rise to such a quasi-stationary configuration stressing the potential interest from an observational point of view.

Isolated, initially cold and spherically symmetric self-gravitating systems may give rise to a virial equilibrium state which is far from spherically symmetric, and typically triaxial, and with no-zero angular momentum. We discuss the main features of the dynamical mechanism that gives rise to such a quasi-stationary configuration stressing the potential interest from an observational point of view.

The angular momentum is a conserved quantity and the usual theoretical interpretation of the origin of the angular momentum of galaxies is that this is originated by from tidal interactions of the galaxy with its neighborhoods. We propose in this paper (in print in Astronomy and Astrophysics) a new mechanism for its origin based that can be efficient also for the case of an isolated object (or for an object with small tidal interactions). The new mechanism works as follows : during the violent relaxation of an isolated self-gravitating system a significant fraction of its mass may be ejected. If the time varying gravitational field also breaks spherical symmetry this mass can potentially carry angular momentum. Thus starting initial configurations with zero angular momentum can in principle lead to a bound virialized system with non-zero angular momentum even though the overall angular momentum is conserved. A simple picture of this mechanism is illustrated in the following figure. The astrophysical and cosmological implications of such a fundamental physical process will be subject of a forthcoming work.